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Fulbright Fellowship Supports Research on Health of Pacific Island Families

After spending 2014 in New Zealand on a Fulbright Fellowship, Kinesiology Professor Marilyn Tseng is back on campus and continuing her data analysis. Tseng spent the year studying the connection between maternal acculturation and health trajectories in Pacific Island families at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). The study examines a cohort of Pacific heritage infants who were born in an area with the highest concentration of Pacific families in New Zealand. Researchers at AUT followed 2,000 infants from birth through age fourteen.

“It is an amazing data resource,” Tseng said. Researchers collected a wealth of information on the birth, family environment and child-raising practices of the Pacific families. They focused on child growth data and measured children’s height, weight and waist circumference. Tseng explored maternal acculturation, looking for differences between the health trajectories of children whose mothers are affiliated with the Pacific Island culture and those whose mothers are affiliated with the New Zealand culture.

“We expect the immigrants to converge with the host population in terms of their health and behaviors,” Tseng said. Because Pacific children are among those at the highest risk for obesity, “we would expect to see the children with mothers who are more acculturated to the Pacific culture gain weight more quickly,” Tseng said.

According to Tseng, the New Zealand population has the same type of health problems as Americans, with a high percentage of the population that is overweight or obese. “New Zealand has a very small population with a big influx of immigrants,” Tseng said, who may be more at risk for non-infectious chronic diseases. The New Zealand population is less educated than the U.S. population on how to prepare for these problems.

Tseng spoke at a few seminars in New Zealand last year, discussing the health data on Pacific families who migrated to New Zealand from countries with higher obesity rates and poorer health customs. She also presented at a training program to educate Pacific nurses about the child growth data and is in the process of publishing an article with the Journal of Childhood Obesity.

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